Israel, Innovation and Insomnia: Interview with Tech Guru Hillel Fuld

1) Hi Hillel, thanks so much for joining us, can we start off with how you got into the field of tech blogging?

I started blogging about 20 years ago when I was at my first job. I was a technical writer, which is the guy that writes the user guides you get with your iPhone that no one ever reads. And I was working for a company called Comverse at the time, a very big tech company. And I was just very bored out of my mind because I'm not made for writing user guides. And I understood that. So I started writing on the internet. I bought a website called techandmarketing.com and I literally just started writing my thoughts on tech, not as an authority because there wasn't an authority. And really that led to entrepreneurs starting to reach out and slowly but surely grew. And then I started writing for all these other sites and that's how it all started.

2) You've had the unique lens to see the behind the scenes perspective on some of the biggest companies in the world, can you share some strengths and weaknesses that you see a lot of the leaders of these companies having in common?

A few things that I find within the leaders and I find lacking in the ones that don't succeed. For starters, knowing your market, this is something that entrepreneurs often skip because it's not as fun or not as sexy as other things, is doing some seriously in-depth competitive analysis, knowing not only your direct competitors but your indirect competitors, who is doing something similar, who is targeting the same target audience as you, who is offering the same value proposition as you, know your competitors. That's something that the winners do and the losers often skip. Another thing is just resilience, the understanding that when you fail, you're going to have to get up again because entrepreneurship is not a rocket ship, it's more like a rollercoaster. So that characteristic resilience is absolutely mandatory for entrepreneurs looking to build a successful company. 

3) What unique struggles in the world of mental health do you think the hi tech and VC world are facing?

I think that people in my surroundings do have issues with sleeping. In fact, I don't think the culture of sleep is where it needs to be. I think it's kind of glorified when you don't sleep a lot. Like Gary Vee always talks about, oh, you know, I work 20 hours a day. Like, that's not sustainable. That's not healthy. I don't know about issues and challenges that other people face, but I think that the industry needs to stop glorifying lack of sleep. We know the expression “sleep is for the weak”. It's ridiculous. And we need to stop spreading that message and encouraging people to work like animals. I think that that's a really big problem. 

4) What can CEOs do to foster mental health awareness in the workplace and support employees going through challenging times?

What CEOs can do, most importantly, they can raise awareness and make it not stigmatize talk about it within the company. You can have HR initiate mental health days or maybe even give employees off once in a while for their mental health day. But I think the most important thing that a CEO can do is talk about it and not leave it something that people like to bury and sweep under the rug. Talk about it and validate it and I think that's a tremendous step forward. 

5) As someone with an active and creative mind working across many time zones, what kind of struggles with sleep have you personally seen?

I do take medicine that kind of helps me to help me sleep a little bit, but, I definitely have a problem with my mind racing at night. I don't know if it's ADHD or something else, but, I definitely have to calm my mind before I go to sleep. Whether it's sitting in front of Netflix and just watching, you know, a light show or just resting my mind for a little bit. Otherwise, I really have a problem sleeping. I'm not going to lie, I definitely sometimes do turn to Ambien when I know I have a big day the next day and I don't and I see that my brain isn't slowing down. So then I have to do something about that. But breathing exercises that I've recently learned have definitely helped. I generally sleep OK, but I would imagine if I stopped taking my meds that I would not sleep as well as I do. 

6) Do you feel like a lot of people in your circles share that same struggle? What could be done to help support the sleep of our greatest innovators and leaders?

I think that the tech industry is no different than any other industry. I think that it's something that unfortunately is still stigmatized. I don't think many people talk about it. I would imagine, I don't know the numbers and the data behind it, but I would imagine anxiety is something that the vast majority of people have to some degree, especially those that are building companies and are raising money from other people who are then obviously expecting them to make a return on that money. These guys live and breathe pressure all day, every day. And so I would imagine that causes anxiety, not to mention when a company fails, you know, after building something for years, raising millions of dollars sometimes and then failing, I would imagine that that leads someone to depression. So I think that there's definitely a mental health challenge within the tech industry, but I'm not sure that it's any different fundamentally than any other industry. 

7) I know since Oct 7th you have pivoted to focus your work specifically on Israel advocacy, can you share about that transition and what you feel about the current situation?

On October 7th, I quickly realized and had complete clarity that tech was not what I needed to be doing at that point in history. And so I shut down my business and I refocused everything to fight for Israel online. And it's been very, very gratifying. I mean, I've reached billions and billions of impressions. I've changed thousands of lives just based on the messages that I'm getting. And that's been great. It's been gratifying. It's been very difficult from a financial perspective because I shut down the business. But it's been good for my soul and good for the State of Israel. But I'm not going to lie, on the mental health side, the amount of hate that I get, both online and offline, is staggering. And it definitely seeps in. It definitely gets to you. But I think that one of the silver linings of the war is that I've developed thicker skin. But it definitely is something that I need to cope with and learn how to remain resilient and not let it bring me down. 

8) What unique mental health and sleep struggles have you seen in Israel throughout the war? What can be done to support the population, especially with soldiers and families of hostages?

I mean, the Houthis aren't helping. They keep obviously firing missiles in the middle of the night, and I would imagine that's a strategy of theirs to terrorize us. But I think that there's a level of anxiety and PTSD in this country at a scale that maybe the world has never known, and that most definitely affects people's sleep. I think people are on the edge all day every day. I think many people are deeply traumatized, and so the government, the country's going to have to address this the day after and figure out a mental health solution at scale. And I don't think talk therapy is going to be sufficient, because again, we're talking about millions of people who've spent the last year and a half running to bomb shelters multiple times a day. So we're going to have to figure that out. It's definitely an issue, and I guess the mental health struggles of most of the people in this country manifest in a lack of sleep. So that's an issue that definitely needs to be addressed. 

9) Hillel, thank you for your time and expertise, anything else you'd like to share on this relevant topic?

I can only say what I've been saying since day one, which is we dance on Purim, we celebrate on Purim, and that was the near annihilation of the Jewish people. Purim was infinitely darker than October 7th. That's a fact. And here we are celebrating. The same is true for Hanukkah and the same is true for Pesach, and the same will be true for Simchas Torah. We will dance again. There's no question about it, because when we say Am Yisroel Chai, people talk about Am Yisroel Chai. They don't realize that Am Yisroel Chai is not just a nice Carlebach song. Am Yisroel Chai is a historical reality, and if anybody has any doubts about that, let them think for one second how many Babylonian friends they have. Every empire is gone, and here we are. So Am Yisroel will continue to be Chai, and we will dance again. We will win this war, despite the challenges, we will get our hostages back. We will obliterate Hamas, we will continue to obliterate Hamas. We will win this war. The Middle East already has a different face than it did a year and a half ago, and we're just getting started. We're going to achieve complete victory and get our hostages back, and build a better life for the future without a direct threat to our existence on our borders.